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Issa calls for hearing into Flight 253 intel lapses

The ranking member of the House's oversight committee is now calling for a hearing into the events leading up to a Christmas Day attempt to bomb a Delta jetliner in Detroit.

The terrorist plot, which the White House has since said represents a "systemic failure" of the intelligence system, proves the "very failures that made us vulnerable before 9/11 still threaten our homeland today," Republican Rep. Darrel Issa (Calif.) said in a statement on Thursday.

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“When we created [the Department of Homeland Security], there was unanimous agreement here on the Hill and in the Executive that we must go from an atmosphere of need to know to need to share," said Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"It now appears that our various counter terrorist agencies are reverting to their pre 9/11 ways and there refusal to share information has put our nation at risk,” he added.

Lawmakers and White House officials alike are still fuming over news that the country's intelligence agencies had at least some indication that suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might try to attack U.S. targets.

Reportedly, the CIA added the Nigerian man to their terrorist database in November, in part because his father warned a local U.S. embassy of his possible radicalization. However, he was never added to a no-fly list, for reasons still unclear, permitting him to take Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.

The president has since ordered a review of the country's intelligence agencies, but that has hardly satisfied some of the White House's toughest Republican critics. Earlier this week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) even suggested President Barack Obama has overlooked the threat of domestic terrorism, putting the country at risk.

Issa sounded a similarly concerned note on Thursday, but he ultimately stressed his hope that the forthcoming hearings and investigations would be "bipartisan."

"There was a breakdown in
communication that impacts numerous government entities and this
Committee should investigate and hold hearings immediately.,” the congressman said.